1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to vehicle-mounted recording systems, and more specifically, to a method and system for transmitting, receiving, and reproducing recorded information from vehicle-mounted recording systems.
2. Background of the Invention
Advances in technologies relating to image capture, computing power, memory storage, and wireless communications have enabled technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS), efficient video compression and decompression, and wireless data transfer. Recent developments benefiting from these and other advances include wireless internet connectivity, handheld high-resolution digital video cameras with significant memory, and world-wide cellular connectivity.
In regard to public safety, law enforcement and homeland security concerns have triggered the ever-increasing installation of surveillance equipment such as on ATMs, buildings, and traffic signals. Although such increased surveillance serves as a deterrent to crime and increases the probability that recorded evidence may be obtained when a crime or act of terror occurs, several problems may be encountered.
Installation, recording, and accessing various surveillance systems may be prohibitively expensive. In addition, searching and retrieving recorded data from multiple independent surveillance systems can be costly and time-consuming. Also, stationary surveillance systems are inherently inefficient because multiple systems must be installed to provide coverage over multiple locations, even though each location may encounter periods of little or no activity when other locations exhibit periods of high activity. For example, crime activity in a downtown area may peak during late night hours while highway accidents may peak during morning and evening rush hours. In order to provide surveillance to cover both peak highway accidents and peak downtown crime activity, cameras must be installed in both locations, even though the surveillance may be expected to be minimally useful during off-peak hours, such as downtown during rush hour, or on the highways during late night hours. Furthermore, using retrieved surveillance data from multiple systems to generate a coherent view of an event such as crime may be prohibitively expensive or difficult.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method and system that provides all of the benefits of present surveillance systems with none of the drawbacks.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a surveillance system that varies surveillance coverage with changing population density.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an efficient method of retrieving surveillance data of interest.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an efficient method of reconstructing an event from data recorded by multiple recording sources.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a surveillance network where the cost of installing monitoring equipment is transferred to consumers.